Last week’s Black Friday protests by Wal-Mart workers and their supporters were a hopeful sign for anyone concerned about the record levels of inequality in our country. Tonight, members of the NYU community have the opportunity to hear about another case of workers mobilizing to defend themselves and their families against corporate greed as nursing home workers join NYU students and the president of the National Lawyers Guild to put NYU Law School Trustee Daniel Straus on trial.
Straus donates over $1 million a year to endow the Straus Institute for the Advanced Study of Law and Justice at the Law School. Yet his company stands accused by the National Labor Relations Board for violating workers’ rights. In New Jersey, his company is accused of firing workers who attempted to form a union. In Connecticut, workers at Straus-owned nursing homes are getting ready to spend their second straight Christmas locked out of their jobs as his company unlawfully refuses to bargain in good faith, attempting to strip workers of their health benefits, threatening workers’ safety.
Earlier this semester, NYU students got a taste of how Straus treats his workers at a demonstration outside the Straus Institute. There, students who were peacefully rallying and handing leaflets to passersby were threatened with physical assault by a couple of dozen anti-union thugs hired by Straus’s company. We later saw Facebook posts between these so-called counter-protesters that showed they were recruited off the Internet and paid $100 to come to campus, where they falsely posed as nursing home workers.
Straus’s company initially denied having anything to do with hiring these people to come to our campus and intimidate students. But a month later, they admitted they had lied to a reporter for The Villager, which ran the apt headline: “NYU trustee’s company did hire goons for demo.”
The NYU administration’s response to these events has been lackluster, at best. They have done nothing to investigate these events or publicly condemn Straus’s behavior. Law School dean Richard Revesz sent an email to the Student Labor Action Movement stating that he “supports students’ right to express their views peacefully and without fear of intimidation” and warning “all parties” to avoid undermining the principle of “peaceful and lawful protest.”
Yet there was only one party that has undermined that principle, and its leader happens to sit on the Law School Board of Trustees. Revesz also said in the email that NYU “does not have any say over who can protest on the public sidewalks near its campus or what views they choose to express.” While that is true, NYU does have a code of ethics for members of its community, and we would expect that it would apply equally to all members — especially to the trustees. It is incumbent upon NYU President John Sexton and Revesz to denounce, firmly and publicly, Straus’s actions to make clear their commitment to students’ rights to express their views without fear of intimidation.
Aside from students’ rights and safety on campus saftey, there is a broader issue here as well — the simple idea that we should be able to expect a member of the Law School Board of Trustees to follow the law. Yet Straus, like many other employers in the United States, seems to feel that he can violate labor law with impunity, turning American workplaces into mini-Abu Dhabis and mini-Shanghais. What message does this send to the future lawyers training at NYU Law, as well as the rest of the NYU community?
Dan DiMaggio is a contributing writer. Email him at [email protected].